


All The Time In The World

by Kate_Shepard



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Final Battle, Fluff and Smut, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Medical Procedures, Porn, Porn With Plot, Serious Injuries, Shameless Smut, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 20:06:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7328881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Shepard/pseuds/Kate_Shepard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Commander Shepard and Major Coats turn to each other before the final battle, they don't expect to see each other again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This storyline is pretty heavy with my version of indoctrination theory because it's something I haven't played around with before, but it's a version of IT that actually fits with the story and the ending (i.e. things that happened after Harbinger did actually happen, but the events on the Crucible were the indoctrination attempt and the last gasp of the Reapers to save themselves).
> 
> As always, I don't own Mass Effect, of course. I just play in BioWare's sandbox.

He was watching her again. The major with the strange silver eyes hadn’t taken them off of her for more than a few moments since his shuttle carrying Admiral Anderson had extracted them and taken them to the FOB. She was accustomed to being looked at and watched, but the way that Coats did it made her think that he had something to say to her but was holding back. She couldn’t imagine what it could be given that she’d only met the man less than an hour before, but that didn’t change the fact that when she looked over, his quicksilver gaze was raking over her again. Typically, she would note it and move on, but this was not a typical day and it was yet another unnerving facet of a situation that already had her on edge.

Shepard had held out hope that she and her team had at least a chance of making it out of this alive. Then they’d arrived on Earth. The briefings, reports, news vids, and numbers hadn’t accurately portrayed the situation here. She’d seen the damage done to Vancouver in a matter of minutes and the Reapers had been here for months. A part of her thought she should have expected it. The larger part of her wondered how the hell anyone could anticipate something like this. She’d been confident, overly so, because she’d killed a handful of Reapers. That had not been enough to prepare her for the hundreds in this city alone and thousands more up above attempting to break past Sword to smash Shield and the Crucible. Even with Hammer largely intact, Shepard could clearly see that the odds of all of them making it through were hovering somewhere closer to none than slim. She was leading the assault. Since landing on Earth, the persistent thought that had been hanging at the back of her mind was that this was the day she died. Again. And this time, there would be no bringing her back.

Shepard wasn’t afraid of death. She’d been there once already. She wasn’t even afraid of dying. She’d done that, too, and it had been horrible, but while death was—generally, at least—permanent, dying itself was temporary. What she was afraid of was dying before she reached her goal. To have come this far and not reach the end, to fail at the final hour, was the worst thing she could think of. She’d had one purpose since being brought back: to stop the Reapers. Everything else was secondary. If she failed now, then that meant that the resources devoted to reviving her, the time she’d spent, the losses she’d faced, were all for naught. That was the one thing that she couldn’t bear. As long as she was able to get through and activate the Crucible, she’d consider death well-earned.

The certainty of her impending end, the unquestioned knowledge that this was her last day on Earth or anywhere else, served to heighten all of her senses. She felt the urgency to see and smell and taste everything occurring around her, no matter how nightmarish it might be. Anderson’s voice rang clearer. The scent of smoke lingering in the air was more acrid. The sensation of the cool night air on her face was crisper. The conversations with her crew were more poignant. Once they began the final assault, she would never see these people again. Her team, her companions, her comrades, her friends, her family, would be lost to her whether through her death or their own. They had followed her through hell time and time again and here they were, standing beside her once more, ready to face the devil and spit in his malicious red eye. She was proud of them. She was afraid for them. She loved them more than life itself.

After Akuze, she had sworn that she would never again let herself get emotionally attached to another squad. She’d held that resolve through the years until she’d found a group of people who had not allowed her to keep her distance. They’d broken through her shields and insinuated themselves in her heart and soul. They had become the family she’d never had. It didn’t matter how much she tried to stand alone, whenever she turned around, they were right behind her. They didn’t question. They didn’t hesitate. They didn’t balk. They forced her to expand her barriers to accommodate their presence and it had been worth every pang that came with growth.

A few of them had tried to move beyond friends and family, but that had been one place where she’d drawn the line. Since losing Alex on Akuze, she hadn’t been able to allow herself to open up quite that much. She could accept that she faced death on a daily basis. She could accept that she sent her crew into death on a daily basis, and she dealt with it when she lost them to the malignant entropy of war. However, she could not survive losing a lover for whom she was responsible again. She looked the other way when others on her crew chose to ignore fraternization rules because she understood their need for comfort and that they had all grown close to each other in various ways. A part of her had envied them that companionship and having someone to turn to in the darkest hours of the night. The rest of her looked at her crewmates and reflected on how difficult it was when she lost them now. Her relationship with Alex had been relatively new. She hadn’t known him as well as she did her team now. Losing one of them if she allowed that last bit of closeness would break her. So when they turned to each other, she turned inward and relied upon herself.

Seeing Tali and Garrus together in the main battery before coming here had sparked something in her that tasted almost like regret. Garrus was like a brother to her and she didn’t resent or even envy Tali’s relationship with him. However, seeing that Tali and Garrus had each other, witnessing the look that passed between Ash and Vega, and the concern in Joker’s eyes for EDI before Cronos Station, she had realized that she’d felt very alone. She had protected herself from losing another lover; but that also meant that there was no one waiting just for her, no one to come back to, no one to turn to in the midst of this final hell that was London.

Hammer team was still straggling in, so she went out onto the bridge between buildings to man the turret again, but for once, nothing moved below. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, smelling the smoke that permeated the air and allowing the cool night breeze to run its fingers through her hair. She didn’t want to look up and see the battle taking place above. This was a single moment of peace, probably the last she would ever have, and she wanted to relish it. There would be enough time later to savor the kick of her rifle, the sight of carnage in her scope, the heat against her palm as she threw fire at the enemy, the roaring din of battle. For this moment, it was quiet. For this moment, her loved ones were as safe as they could be in the middle of a warzone. For this moment, she was alive.

When she opened her eyes, she found him watching her again. He’d leaned up against the low wall that served as a railing and crossed his arms over his chest. His expression was as inscrutable as it had been since they’d met. She echoed his stance and raised a brow. “Can I help you, Major?” she asked.

“I apologize, Commander,” he said in his smooth British voice. “I didn’t mean to intrude. It’s been so long since I’ve seen anything but war and pain and death that I couldn’t resist being a part of a moment of peace, however peripherally.”

“How long have you been serving under Anderson?” she asked.

“I was assigned to him when he arrived in London,” Coats said. “I haven’t had the opportunity to work closely with him for most of it, but it’s been enough to know that he’s one of the primary reasons we’re all still here. You are the other.”

“I’ve just done my job, Major,” she said. She was tired of being the hero. She wondered why he had followed her out in the first place. It was odd that it would be a stranger rather than one of her crew who would find her. However, when she thought back on her team, she realized that they were all otherwise occupied. The last time she’d seen them, Garrus and Tali had found a dark hallway. Liara and Javik were watching the city together. Ash and Vega were discussing their strategies. EDI had worn the expression that had begun to tell Shepard that she was monitoring Joker, a combination between a fond smile and concern. The rest were off site with their teams. She was the only one left standing alone. “I thought you had a squad to tend to,” she finally said.

“They’re ready,” he told her. “Don’t worry. They’re saying their goodbyes now. We all know this is likely the end of the road, and that’s all right as long as we win. Why are you out here alone?”

“They’re all saying their goodbyes, too. I already have,” she said.

“You have no one to wait with?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“No,” she said shortly.

“Good,” he replied and took two quick steps toward her. His hand closed over her elbow and their armor clashed together as his mouth came down onto hers. She stood frozen in stunned silence for a moment as she considered her options. She could push him away, punch him in the jaw if she really wanted to, and walk away. She probably should do so considering that she didn’t even know the man’s first name and had known him for all of an hour. However, if this truly was her last day and her life was now measured in mere hours rather than years or even days, then what harm could come from savoring this experience as well?

It had been years since she’d had a man’s lips against hers, tasted his tongue in her mouth, been held by strong arms wrapped around her, and simply felt wanted. And, oh, how wanted he made her feel. He didn’t simply kiss her, he _savored_ her. He drank her in like he was a man lost in the desert and she was the last bit of water in all of the world. His calloused hands framed her face and his fingers slid between the strands of her hair as his tongue stroked hers and the smell of war burned their nostrils. This, she thought vaguely as the galaxy condensed around them, was _exactly_ what a last kiss should be like. There was no urgency, no desperation, only a fierce determination to be _alive_ in this moment together. When her arms circled his neck and her hands dove into his hair, he groaned into her mouth and banded an arm around her waist, drawing her closer.

They drew back to take deep, gasping breaths. His pupils were dilated enough that his irises were little more than thin silver bands around the black pools in their center. She felt the flush of her cheeks and the fullness of her lips and when her tongue darted out to glide over them, his silver gaze locked onto her mouth again, and with another groan, he lowered his head once more. She stopped him and said quickly, “We’re too exposed.”

He nodded and took her by the hand to lead her into one of the empty, war-torn rooms. The walls in the far corner were gaping open and the edge of the floor was beginning to crumble, but the corner near the door was solid enough and she didn’t protest when he pushed her up against the wall and brought his mouth crashing down onto hers again. With the decision made, the desperation came and their hands scrabbled at the seals of the other’s armor. She popped open his torso piece and slid her hands down his toned chest. Her head fell back as her own torso guard fell away and his mouth ran along her throat, licking and nipping without regard to the grime of battle that covered them both.

He opened her undersuit and his hand slid inside, drawing a gasp from her lips as a calloused finger found her center. His teeth bit down on the side of her neck when she drew him out and began to stroke his length. He groaned her name as he thrust up into her hand and slipped a pair of fingers into her. They worked magic inside of her. She hadn’t been touched like this since being rebuilt and it felt like all of her nerve endings were alight. She tried to hold herself back, but the wave was building with every movement of his fingers. When his thumb brushed her clit, she bit down on her lip to muffle her cries. “There’s a girl,” he murmured against her ear.

He withdrew his fingers and moved her hand from him before lining himself up against her entrance. She rocked her hips to take him as he thrust inside. “Oh, god, Coats,” she gasped as he filled her.

“Nick,” he said, hooking his arm beneath her hips for leverage. He rocked his pelvis, thrusting into her and the sensation drove her up again. Her armor scraped against the block wall and his armor dug into her bare ass, but she noted these things distantly as she pulled him closer to kiss him again. He pounded into her and she responded in kind. Once, she might have felt ashamed of herself for fucking a virtual stranger up against a wall with her crew and mentor mere yards away, but this was an exceptional situation. Impending death did wonders for destroying embedded social norms and he seemed to need this reminder of life as much as she did.

His hand wrapped in her hair and he tilted her head to allow his mouth better access to hers as he sheathed himself in her again and again. All of her senses were heightened and the rough scrape of the five o’clock shadow over the hard line of his jaw against her hand was as immediate as the scent of blood and smoke and gun oil and the scrape of his short nails against her scalp. He was doing things with his hips that sent shockwaves rolling through her body. She used the wall behind her and his arm holding her up to meet his thrusts as she rolled the muscles of her vaginal walls around his thick cock. “Oh, fuck, Shepard,” he groaned into her mouth, his arms tightening around her.

She repeated the motion for as long as she could maintain voluntary control over her body, but too soon, the sensations built and threatened to overwhelm her again. She heard her gasping breaths over the din of distant explosions and he said, “That’s it, darling. Let go. I’ve got you.”

His rich voice and piercing silver eyes undid her and he stopped the back of her head from cracking into the wall as she unraveled. A few more quick thrusts sent him over the edge as well, and she heard her name against her ear as he pulsed into her. They remained where they were for a long moment as they caught their breath before she unwrapped her legs from his trim waist and he lowered her feet to the floor. Before stepping back so that they could replace their armor, however, he stopped and brought his lips down to hers again. She hadn’t expected this and certainly hadn’t been prepared for something akin to tenderness that drove any rising misgivings away and replaced them with an unaccustomed warmth.

He looked down into her eyes and said, “I believe in you, Shepard. Don’t fear. You will not fail us.”

How did he know? she wondered. How did he know that it wasn’t death but failure that haunted her? Somehow, this man whom she barely knew understood her perfectly. He dropped another kiss on her lips before stepping back and replacing his armor. While she adjusted and sealed her own, he bent down and retrieved the rifle she’d laid aside. She looked over at him to see him admiring it with an appreciation that was similar to what he’d shown her. “Sniper?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he answered. “Where did you get this? This is the original geth M-98 Widow, not the Kassa Fabrication or Alliance model. It’s not even designed for humans to carry.”

“That’s Eleanor,” she told him. He passed it back to her and she clipped it to her back. “I acquired it on a Collector ship. I was afraid the Alliance would confiscate it when I turned myself over, so Garrus kept it for me. That rifle has gotten me through some tight situations.”

“Why didn’t you upgrade to the Black Widow?” he asked as they walked out of the room together. “It has a higher capacity and less reload time.”

“Yes,” she said, “but the damage per shot is higher with the original Widow and the piercing capabilities are second to none. I can do in one shot with the Widow what takes the Black Widow two, and the recoil isn’t much better with the Black Widow. I can reload mine in the time that it takes you to refocus after the first shot without losing sight of my target.”

“How do you manage not to shatter your arm?” he asked.

“Heavy bone weaves,” she answered. Anderson raised a hand to gesture them over and she looked at Coats. “Duty calls.”

“Let’s go send these bastards back to hell, Commander,” he said with a smile.


	2. Chapter 2

Coats watched Shepard as the truck rocked across the shattered terrain toward the beam. She was sitting across from Anderson and they were speaking in low voices. The familiarity and affection between the two was clear to see. He’d already known that the admiral was fond of the commander from the things he’d said of her. The man looked at her as a daughter. Seeing Shepard interacting with him, it was clear that the feeling was mutual. She was respectful and addressed him properly, but there was a warmth there and a way of speaking that told him they got each other on a fundamental level that didn’t require full conversation to get their points across.

He could see the strain in her face as she propped her elbows on her knees. Since arriving on Earth, the only rest she’d gotten had been at the FOB or during transport. They were all well beyond exhaustion. She wasn’t giving up, though, and when the team needed bolstering, she rose to the task once more. She was unlike any other woman—any other _person_ —he’d ever met. He’d been fascinated by her for years. He had watched the vids when she was made the first human Spectre, had reviewed all of the footage after the Battle of the Citadel, had raised a pint in her honor when the first _Normandy_ had gone down. He hadn’t truly believed the rumors that she was back until he’d seen her on the news. Her mission then hadn’t been publicized, but he’d heard the stories.

He’d gone so far as to request to be assigned to her guard detail when she’d been imprisoned but had been assigned instead to London. He’d wanted to meet her, to see if the person lived up to the legend. He’d followed the reports of her as she’d travelled the galaxy ending conflicts and feuds, making peace where she could and leaving destruction in her wake when she couldn’t. It had become more difficult toward the end to find any source of news, but he’d watched every episode of _Battlespace_ he could get access to when he had the time and could connect to the network. He’d known she would return to Earth eventually but hadn’t expected to actually meet her in the flesh. He certainly hadn’t anticipated having her, even briefly, in his arms.

When they’d come in to extract her and her team, he hadn’t known quite what to expect. The shuttle doors had opened and he’d seen her with pistol in hand, taking down cannibals and marauders without hesitation, while fire flew from her palm and her eyes burned with determination. He’d seen no fear there and she’d refused to board the shuttle until the turian and asari with her had gotten to safety. She put her people first and only considered her own security once theirs was secured. They, in turn, would follow her anywhere.

Given the way that the turian had instantly jumped in to insist that Shepard be given due credit for gathering the forces and the fact that Vakarian’s name was almost as well-known as Shepard’s, he’d thought at first that the rumors about them were true. Shepard was famous, Vakarian only slightly less so, but Shepard and Vakarian as a pair were virtually inseparable. Wherever she was, he was there also, behind and to her right and had been from the beginning. It only made sense that they were partners in a more intimate sense as well. But when they’d reached the FOB, a quarian had gone to Vakarian and Shepard had walked away without a backward glance.

He’d seen her team pair off while they were waiting for Hammer to finish arriving and had noticed her slipping away alone. There was an undeniable bond between Shepard and her crew, but when the time had come where others were turning to those closest to them for comfort through the waiting, she’d been alone. From her reaction to it, that hadn’t been unexpected. He’d followed her out and found her standing beside the turret with her face tilted up to the dark sky and her eyes closed. Even with the Reaper stalking in the background and the glow of flames from the city licking across her face, she’d been undeniably beautiful. His reaction to her was another thing he hadn’t anticipated. He’d seen her as the legend, the soldier, the leader, but he hadn’t before seen the woman beneath. He wondered how many ever had while they were looking up at her on the pedestal where they’d placed her.

Perhaps it was the result of being trapped alone in Big Ben for three days, sniping whatever moved below while living on stims and too little nutrigel; perhaps it was the result of seeing his city laid to waste; perhaps it was the knowledge of exactly what they were walking into and that they likely wouldn’t be walking out again, but he’d known in that moment that if he didn’t get just a taste of her, he’d regret it for whatever was left of his rapidly shortening life.

Major Nicholas Coats had never lacked for confidence nor companionship. He’d dated soldiers and civilians, humans and asari, and had even had one ill-fated relationship with a model-turned-actress. He was accustomed to the attention he received from women and registered it only peripherally unless he returned the interest. He wasn’t promiscuous but he wasn’t a saint, either, and he had enough experience to know that he was generally the less invested among his partnerships. Shepard, however, was different. He’d been invested in her before he’d even met her and it was only when she was up close and personal that he’d recognized the attraction.

It could have been the poignancy that comes with knowing that one is doing something for both the first and last time, but what had begun as a quick, final, we’re-about-to-die, ships passing in the night fuck had ended up being one of the most fantastic and simultaneously meaningful experiences of his life. He recognized that the intimacy had been artificially enhanced by the situation. If it had been just a random fuck in a pub bathroom, it likely wouldn’t have had the same importance. That didn’t change the fact that there was a tie between them that was in many ways similar to the bond that formed between unexpected teammates in a firefight. Some of his closest friendships had lasted mere minutes in a foxhole but had touched him for a lifetime. He knew without question that if he survived this night, he would remember the minutes in that room on his deathbed.

When the truck rocked to a halt and they climbed out to view the field leading up to the beam, he saw true fear on her face for the first time and knew that it was reflected on everyone else in their party. Suicide lay in front of them. There was nothing but bare earth and fire with a Reaper parked beside the beam sending out rays of instant death to all who dared approach. There was no cover even if cover was effective against a Reaper that close. It would be a foot race to the beam and he knew with a bone-deep certainty that he was looking down at his final resting place.

Shepard knew it, too, but she collected herself and he saw her features harden as she gestured the turian and the quarian forward. He heard her say, “No matter what happens, don’t look back. Don’t stop. You run. If you aren’t prepared to leave any of us behind, you need to say so now. This is bigger than any one of us. If we don’t make it to that beam, we are _all_ lost.”

The turian and quarian nodded and Vakarian turned to the quarian with a look of devastating tenderness and pain. Even through the mask, the quarian’s reciprocation was evident. Vakarian ran a hand down her arm and placed his forehead against her mask before they broke apart and turned to Shepard. The quarian hugged her quickly and tightly and Vakarian pulled her in for one as well. None of them said it, but it was clear that they knew they were saying goodbye. There wasn’t a chance in hell that all three would make it through to the end. Shepard turned to Coats and shook his hand. He held it for longer than was necessary and looked down into her eyes. She nodded and they stepped away. She drew the pistol from her hip and he did the same as Vakarian went for his assault rifle. Their sniper rifles were useless here. The quarian drew her shotgun and a defense drone appeared from her omni-tool. They were as ready as they would ever be.

Shepard and her team went first. Coats and Anderson followed behind. The moment their boots hit the ground, chaos engulfed them. Trucks flew through the air and exploded. The red beam from the Reaper fired seemingly at random but hit something with every shot, sending a hail of broken ground raining down on them. He lost sight of Anderson but could see Shepard and her team ahead of him. She was running as if her life depended on it—and it did—and Vakarian and the quarian weren’t far behind.

The Reaper beam sent a truck flying in her direction as another exploded near her teammates. They kept running even with fire trailing off of them, unwilling to let their commander continue on alone. Shepard ducked and another truck landed and exploded almost on top of Vakarian and the quarian. Despite her earlier words, he wasn’t surprised to see Shepard turn back. She would order them to leave her behind, but she wouldn’t do so to them. His attention broke from them as a Mako landed in a burst of heat and shrapnel a few feet from him. The blast knocked him to the ground and he had time to reflect that he should have worn a damn helmet before darkness closed in on him.

When he came to, the field was littered with bodies and broken vehicles. He opened his eyes in time to see the _Normandy_ fly away and wondered if he was hallucinating. He stood and located his pistol before running around the side of the truck. A handful of people still ran toward the beam and he began to follow. One by one, they were cut down. His eyes caught on a small female figure and his heart lurched as he recognized Shepard. He had only an instant to feel relief before horror overtook it as the Reaper turned its attention to her. Time seemed to slow as the beam cut across the rock and slammed into her. She went down. He tried to run ahead but stumbled and fell to his knees. He cursed as he realized that the bone in his shin was scraping against the inside of his armor. He used his sniper rifle as a crutch and rose to his good leg only to find it unable to bear his weight.

That was fine. He’d fucking crawl. But when he looked around, he realized that he was alone. If Shepard hadn’t made it, no one would. They needed a new plan. They needed to regroup and find another way around that damned Reaper. Anderson was gone. Shepard was gone. The command was his and he couldn’t justify continuing to throw his men against this when it had been shown unequivocally that it would not work. That was insanity. If nothing else, they needed to send a wave through the front as a distraction while an infiltration team flanked the Reaper and hit the beam. They only needed one person to make it and open the arms. He called for a retreat and began to half-limp, half-crawl back to the rendezvous point.

When he got close, another soldier saw him and a pair of them ran forward to help him up to the trucks. A medic stripped his greaves while he conferred with the soldiers waiting for orders. He breathed a sigh of relief when the medigel began to work on his ankle and gritted his teeth while the medic set the bone in his shin. More medigel would knit the bones together. He wouldn’t be quick, but with the support of his armor, he’d be able to move. It was enough. They would take a single truck around in a wide circle with two infiltration teams. Meanwhile, the bulk of what was left of Hammer would attempt the beam run again. Someone shouted and he looked past to see the Reaper breaking off. His planning was unnecessary. “Now!” he ordered. “Go, go, go!” The medic protested when he rose, but he ignored him. There wasn’t a single one of them who was completely uninjured and he would not sit on the sidelines while others threw themselves at the problem. Shepard wouldn’t even have considered doing so. She’d have led the charge no matter now injured she was. He ordered the medic forward with him.

Admiral Hackett’s voice came over his comm, announcing that someone had made it through the beam and ordering the fleets to converge on the Crucible to give the person time to open the arms of the Citadel. Though he knew it was impossible, he also knew that it was Shepard. He’d seen her take a direct hit from the Reaper, but if she had somehow managed to survive it, she wouldn’t have stopped. She’d have clawed her way forward on her belly if that was what was necessary. It made him even more determined to reach her. Then he heard her voice over the comm. “Anderson?” She seemed to be talking to herself because there was no response from the admiral. He could see the Citadel above, and after a few long minutes, the arms began to open. She’d done it. The soldiers around him stopped running to look up in wonder as the Crucible docked. Shepard continued her one-sided conversation with Anderson, something about the best seats in the house and then she was telling him to stay with her. He thought it was odd. Even if Anderson’s comms were damaged, it sounded like she was close enough to him that hers should have picked up his voice.

They waited with bated breath for the Crucible to fire. Nothing happened. He heard Hackett say Shepard’s name and began to run again. Her voice was weak and thready and there was a rattle in her breath that made his stomach churn. A shot rang out and he saw the medic go down. The marauder that had shot him fell a heartbeat later from Coats’ pistol. The medic was dead, so Coats took his bag and threw it over his shoulder. If Shepard didn’t get medical care soon, she’d need a body bag. He wondered where the hell Vakarian and the quarian were and then remembered the truck and seeing the _Normandy_ leaving the field. She’d called the ship in to extract them and continued on alone. There would be no one else up there with her.

Hackett announced the arming of the Crucible and ordered the retreat to the rendezvous point. Coats stopped and looked up as the enormous Crucible began to glow brightly enough to be clearly seen from space. It fired and he shouted Shepard’s name helplessly as a reddish beam of light shot from the center of the Citadel and then the station exploded. A minute later, he threw himself behind a truck as a red wave of some kind of energy washed over him, dropping the husks that had noticed him and begun their lurching run in his direction. He looked around to see his troops with stunned looks on their faces before they threw their fists up in the air and began to cheer. He couldn’t join in their celebration. Shepard was still up there and there was no one to go get her.

“Sir!” one of the marines behind him shouted as he ran out of the shelter of the overturned truck. “What are you doing?”

“Going to get Shepard!” he shouted back without stopping.

The marine ran forward and grabbed his arm. “What? But the Citadel—look at it, sir! You don’t even know if the connection point for the beam is still there! It could be on fire! You don’t have a helmet. How are you going to breathe if the artificial atmosphere is gone? The fleet has retreated and our shuttles are down. There’s no telling how long it will be before we can come get you!”

“Then give me your helmet but I’m going up!” he insisted as something caught his eye and he moved toward it. “Send supplies up through the beam until an extraction team can arrive.” The marine removed his helmet and Coats sealed it to his armor and activated the breathing unit. Of course, if he needed it then Shepard was already dead and he would be the one trapped up there alone. It was a risk he was willing to take. The marine tossed him a handful of nutrigel packs and extra canteens of water. Coats grabbed the object he’d noticed and clipped it to his back before turning to run the last hundred yards to the beam.

He came out in a tunnel, and after regaining his vision from the blinding white light of the beam, located the med bag and pulled himself to his feet. His boots squelched in the gelatinous fluid coating the floor and something plopped wet and heavy nearby. Coats had seen horrors beyond counting in this war and had thought that there was nothing left that could possibly turn his stomach, but as the slaughterhouse smell of the tunnel hit him and he registered the piles of bodies lining it, he had to fight back the urge to retch. Blood was everywhere. It made the floor slick, painted the walls burgundy, and dripped from the ceiling in thick globs. He shuddered as he realized that Shepard had come through here alone, afraid, and badly wounded. It was enough to get him moving. He saw Anderson lying in one of the piles of bodies and stopped to check on him. He was gone. Coats closed Anderson’s eyes and shot the keeper stripping the uniforms off of the soldiers.

The dark tunnel ended in a wide chasm. More bodies littered the area here and he noted that these did not look fresh. They’d been here for some time. He cursed the Reapers as he kept his pistol at the ready and called for Shepard. The ramp ahead led to a darkened area, and as he reached the top, he realized that he could see the stars and the still remains of the Reapers hanging in space. None of them moved. He hoped that was because the damn things were dead and not simply because the fleet had retreated. There was blackened rubble everywhere. How could Shepard possibly have survived this and where in the mess could she be? The shattered remains of the Crucible hulked overhead and he imagined he could feel it pressing down on him as he began to dig.


	3. Chapter 3

He found a body half an hour later. The husk-looking man had a bullet in his skull. Coats wondered what the hell had happened up here but didn’t let it distract him from his purpose. He called out for her and a few minutes later, a ball of fire flew out from a pile of debris. “Shepard!” he shouted. She was alive! He ran over to the area from which the plasma ball had come and said, “If you can, bang on something with a rock. Help me find you.” He heard a rustle and then a faint clack. Using the sound, he zeroed in on the spot and began to toss chunks of concrete out of the way.

When he finally found her, he almost mistook her for another piece of the rubble and it was a long moment before his mind fully registered what he was seeing. The chest piece that she’d cast aside only hours before to make herself available to his hands was now charred. Most of her hair had been burned away. Her arms were covered in burns and the skin was blackened. One of her legs was trapped beneath a chunk of concrete he wasn’t sure that even he could move and there was a thick section of rebar impaled through her thigh. Her breathing was thin and tortured; when he knelt down to check it, he found her pulse weak and thready. Her eyes were glazed and she appeared to be having to struggle to focus on him.

“Did it…work?” she gasped.

“I think so,” he told her. “The Reaper ground forces that I saw all fell and the Reapers themselves haven’t moved since the Crucible fired.”

“EDI? Geth?” she asked.

“What about them?” he asked her. He thought she was delirious, especially when she started talking about a child and tubes and pillars of light and choices that made no sense. “Shepard, love,” he said, “look up. The Crucible, what’s left of it, is up there. There are no tubes or lights or children there. You’re by the control console.”

He let her keep talking because it meant that she was still with him even though her voice sounded like she’d been chewing on glass. He injected her with medigel for her internal injuries and coated her burned skin with it. There was a gunshot wound on her abdomen and another on her shoulder. He cleaned and bandaged them as well. He found an IV kit in the medic’s bag and started it. She slipped in and out of consciousness as he worked. He used one of those times to lodge his shoulder under the concrete beam pinning her down. He hefted with every bit of force he could muster, but it wouldn’t move. A biotic could possibly lift it, but moving it manually was out of the question. Additionally, he was hesitant to move the cable in her leg in case it was preventing a blood vessel from bleeding out. A scan with his omni-tool confirmed that that was, indeed, the case. “Fuck,” he cursed softly.

“Tell me,” she croaked out. He hadn’t realized she’d woken again.

He looked at her and the lie he was concocting died when his eyes met hers. She looked at him with the full knowledge and acceptance of her predicament. She was dying in front of him and there might not be a damn thing he could do about it but hold her and ensure she wasn’t alone.

Aloud, he said, “This rebar is stopping you from bleeding out. If I remove it or it shifts, you could have less than a minute. Leaving it in is an open vector for infection, and given the state of this place, I’d say that’s almost a guarantee. The pillar pinning you is far too heavy to move alone and you have no pulse in your foot.”

“I’m fucked, Coats,” she said weakly. “You know it. I know it. I’ve got maybe four hours before compartment syndrome sets in. Gangrene won’t be far behind given the cable in my thigh, the lack of blood flow to the limb, and the burns and other open wounds on my body. That’s not how I want to die, Major.”

“The medigel and dressings on the burns and the gunshot to your abdomen will keep you for a few days,” he said. “The leg’s the problem. Even without the rest of the risks, I don’t know how stable this area is. There could be more explosions. It could be weakened from the ones that have already occurred. The Crucible above could still collapse. It isn’t safe here.”

“Please tell me you have medic training,” she said, closing her eyes.

“I do, actually,” he answered. “I’m a damn good one, in fact. I’m just a better infiltrator.”

“Then you know what needs to be done and how to do it,” she said. “No time like the present.”

“I have no pain meds,” he said. He’d searched through the bag, but while there were antibiotics, all of the pain medication was gone. “I don’t even have a sedative to put you under.”

“Wouldn’t work for long anyway,” she said. “I hope you’ve got a good bone saw in there. Remember what I said about the bone weaves? I’ve had the heavy muscle and skin weaves as well. It isn’t going to be easy.”

“Can you handle it?” he asked. He’d had to do a field amputation once before, but that patient had been sedated, the field had been relatively clean, he’d had assistance, and he hadn’t been covered in grime. He also hadn’t had that patient’s limb wrapped around his waist less than eight hours earlier.

“I’ve sat for four hours with thresher maw acid eating into my skin,” she said. “I can handle it.”

“The only good news I have for you is that the rest of your injuries won’t hurt,” he said. “You brain will focus on the leg and forget the rest.”

“That’s the good news, huh?” she asked, giving a weak laugh. “I think I’ll pass on the bad news, then.”

“I don’t have a bone saw,” he said, giving it to her anyway. “I’ll have to use my omni-blade.”

“Great,” she groaned.

He cleaned himself as much as possible and then cut away the remnants of her armor and uniform so that he could access the area and cleaned it as well as he could. There were sterile drapes and a thermal blanket in the medic’s bag and he set them up. The drapes had mass effect fields that would help to keep the area clean and the thermal blanket would help maintain her body temperature. He was worried about her going into shock, but there wasn’t much more he could do to prevent it with what he had. A groan from above him made him look up. He didn’t see a shift in the Crucible, but if it was affected by the station’s artificial gravity, then it would come down on top of them if it fell.

He needed to hurry and get her out of here, but rushing could kill her, so he forced himself to focus on what he was doing as he laid out the supplies he had and ran through the procedure in his mind. When he was ready, he looked to Shepard. She stared at him with pain clear in her eyes but accompanied by the same fierce determination she always seemed to carry. He was in awe of her. She requested something to bite down on and he found a strap and placed it between her teeth. She took a deep breath and then nodded.

She squeezed her eyes shut and grunted when he made the first cut but didn’t cry out. That came when he reached the nerves. He fought to tune out the agonizing sounds and ignore the way her body shuddered in reaction to the trauma. If he paid attention to her pain, he would lose his nerve and be unable to continue causing it. The reminder that he was doing this to save her life seemed weak beside her tortured screams. He hoped fervently that she would pass out again. He talked to her as he worked swiftly but smoothly and wasn’t sure if she could hear him or not. She cursed him and God and the Reapers and ‘the motherfucker who invented concrete’ but didn’t ask him to stop or beg for mercy. Even injured beyond belief, she was still Commander Shepard and she would not give in to her pain and fear. He noted the presence of cybernetic implants in her muscle tissue and left as many as he could intact. He didn’t know their purpose, but they had to be important and he thought that perhaps they could help her heal. Above him, the Crucible groaned.

“Easy, love,” he crooned. “I’ve got you. We’re almost through. Just another minute, darling, and I’ll stop.” He heard her sob in response and said, “There! Done! Just let me bandage this up and we’ll get you out of here.”

“The Crucible,” she gasped. He looked up and saw one of the posts holding it in place snap. He threw himself over her as it dropped and the other supports strained. They held and he began throwing the unused supplies back into the bag. He shouldered it quickly and lifted Shepard into his arms. She bit back a cry of pain and said, “Go,” as another support snapped.

He didn’t know where to go. He didn’t know where they were to begin with. The only place he’d seen had been the chasm and the tunnel. He couldn’t take her into the tunnel with these open wounds. There was no telling what kind of bacteria were lurking there just waiting for a weakened host. He picked his way out of the rubble and ran for the chasm. At the bottom of the ramp, he turned to the side and climbed as carefully as he could over the railing. He had no idea where it went, though the curve to it suggested that it looped around the Presidium. He thought that if he could find another of those tunnels, he might be able to get her back to the Presidium, and from there, to Huerta Memorial. They had to connect somehow.

For now, however, he needed to get her away from that opening. When the Crucible fell, it would expel a cloud of debris and she didn’t need anything more in her wounds or her lungs. There was nothing he could do if it broke the walls of the chasm itself and sucked away the artificial atmosphere that had somehow managed to remain even with the explosions and loss of power on the station. He activated the torch on his omni-tool and used the light to illuminate his way.

“Pistol,” she said as he climbed over another of the raised beams. He looked down at her in confusion. “Give me your pistol,” she said. “If there’s anything in here, you can’t carry me and the bag and shoot at the same time.”

“Your arms are burned,” he pointed out.

“Third degree,” she said. “Doesn’t even hurt except around the edges. I can still move my hands. That means I can hold a gun.”

He sat on the beam and used his lap to support her as he unclipped the pistol from his hip. She took it and activated the torch on top of it to add more light. He had to admit, he felt much more comfortable moving through the darkened space with both more light and the knowledge that at least one of them was armed. With anyone else, he might have felt misgivings about their effectiveness, but this was Shepard. Even half-dead, she was still likely a better shot than anyone he’d ever known. Groans echoed through the chasm.

“I lost Eleanor,” she said mournfully.

“No, you didn’t,” he said. “Look over my right shoulder.”

“You found it,” she said. “How?”

He said, “It was on the ground near the spot where you were hit by the beam. There were pieces of what I now realize was your armor, but the rifle was intact except for the crack in the scope.”

“I can replace the scope,” she said. “Thank you.” For the first time since he’d found her, the pain in her voice faded.

“It seems I’ve discovered your first love,” he noted.

“No,” she said. “Eleanor is a close second. The _Normandy_ is the first.”

He nodded and said, “Well, Admiral Hackett gave the order to retreat to the rendezvous point before the Crucible fired. The _Normandy_ was still up there at that point. All ships retreated, so she should be back soon.”

“I hadn’t expected you to know that much,” she said, turning to rest the back of her head against his shoulder. Her eyes remained sharp and scanned the area for threats. “How did you find me, anyway?”

“I got knocked out shortly after Vakarian and that quarian of yours got hit,” he told her.

“Tali,” she said. “The quarian is Tali.”

“Tali, then,” he agreed. “I came to as your ship was taking off, just as you got hit. I thought you were gone. I couldn’t walk and no one else was moving, so I gave the order to fall back and regroup. I thought that if I sent the bulk of the force up the center, I could send a small team around the back and get them through without the Reaper taking notice.”

“We should have thought of that earlier,” she said.

He said, “Yes, well, Anderson was a good leader, but he tended to think inside the box and we were all taken aback when the Reaper landed.”

Her voice was tight when she asked, “Did you find him?”

“Anderson?” he asked. She nodded and he said, “Yes. He was in the tunnel.”

She shook her head and said, “No. I killed him.”

He stopped where he stood and stared down at her in shock. “What?”

“The Illusive Man—the one who looked like a husk—did…something. I’m not sure what. It may have been biotics. His fist glowed. There were these dark, oily tendrils clouding my vision and whispers in my head and the next thing I knew, my finger was tightening on the trigger and he had blood pouring out of his side. I shot the Illusive Man, too.”

“Darling, Anderson’s body is in the tunnel with the keepers,” he said as the deck jolted beneath him. She gestured to an opening in the bulkhead and they peered down the tunnel to ensure that it was empty before he carried her into it. They made it to the middle before a deafening crash filled their ears and the floor rocked wildly. He turned so that his back was to the opening, shielding her as well as he could, and waited until the station stabilized once more.

“No. He’s here,” she insisted.

“Sweetheart, I closed his eyes myself. I promise you.”

She said, “I think the Reapers were trying to indoctrinate me. Are you sure there was no tube or beam up there?”

“I’m positive, sweetheart. You didn’t kill him,” he answered as he looked around the tunnel. This one was devoid of both keepers and bodies. When he was certain it was empty, he set her down against the wall and scanned her with his omni-tool. With the immediate threat past, she seemed to remember her injuries and her exhaustion. She winced and leaned her head back against the wall as she struggled to control her breathing. He had the thought that she was just that strong and had pushed it away while there were things that needed to be done. Only now was she allowing herself to really feel and react to it.

“I’m all right,” she said without opening her eyes. “This just hurts like a son of a bitch. It’s easier to breathe, though, and my side doesn’t hurt anymore. The medigel is working.”

He passed her a canteen and told her to drink while he reinserted the IV he’d had to remove when they’d run. When he asked if she was hungry, she told him she wouldn’t be able to keep it down. He told her to take the nutrigel anyway. She choked it down slowly, wincing with every swallow. When she coughed and groaned, he said, “What’s wrong with your throat?”

“Burned, I think,” she answered.

“Open your mouth,” he instructed and used his torch to look at the back of her throat. “Shit, Shepard, why didn’t you say anything? Or is fire-breathing a hobby of yours?”

She laughed slightly and said, “Some of my subordinates might say so.”

“Your crew loves you,” he said as he dug through the med bag. He came up triumphantly with a packet of the new experimental medigel designed specifically for lung tissue.

“My _team_ loves me,” she said. “There’s a difference.”

He cracked open the disposable nebulizer and passed it to her. “Use that and don’t talk. Everyone in the damn galaxy loves you, Shepard. None of us would be here if it weren’t for you.” She shivered, so he wrapped the thermal blanket around her and removed his armor before moving behind her to carefully lean her back into his arms. Her shivering gradually lessened and she relaxed.

When the nebulizer clicked off, she said, “There’s a difference between gratitude or admiration and love. I’m sure people are grateful and I’m sure some of them admire me and I know a lot of them look up to me even if I don’t feel like I deserve it. My team, on the other hand, loves me. They’ve followed me into hell over and over again without a backward glance because I’ve walked into their own personal hells beside them. I know their secrets, their fears, their strengths and weaknesses, their hopes and dreams. I know about their families and their friends and their childhoods. I _know_ them, and whether they were a paragon of virtue or a cold-blooded killer when we met, I accept them for who they are.”

“That’s a rare thing,” he said. “Not many people are capable of looking past the surface and seeing the demons that lie beneath and even less are willing to dance with them.”

She leaned back into him and said, “Sounds like personal experience.”

“Oh, I’ve got my share of demons, love,” he assured her. “Who doesn’t, especially after this war?”

She yawned and said, “No one.”

“Right. Rest now, darling. I’ve got you,” he said.

“What’s with the pet names?” she asked wearily.

“Habit,” he answered. “My mum uses them. I picked it up from her.”

“Somehow I can’t imagine you calling your buddies by pet names,” she said. “Why’d you come after me when no one else did? You couldn’t have known if you’d even survive the trip up here. What would you have done if the connecting point to the beam had been gone?”

“Gotten spaced, I suppose,” he said. “I wasn’t about to leave the person who saved us all to die alone up here and you sounded like you could use a bit of help. We heard you talking to Anderson, but no reply from him, and with Admiral Hackett and then the comms went silent.”

“You didn’t hear the kid?” she asked.

“Shepard, darling, there was no kid,” he told her again. “We could see the entire base of the crucible from where we were. There were no tubes or walkways or beams of light. There was just the body connecting to the arms. In the center of the body was a blue circle but there was no beam of light or structure connecting it. It docked through the supports and the base of the tower but you were _on_ the base of the tower. When I found you, the remains of the control panel were holding up another chunk of concrete that would have crushed your head if it hadn’t held. There is nothing like what you describe there.”

“You think I imagined it? Was I hallucinating?” she asked.

“I think you passed out after activating the Crucible,” he said. “Perhaps the Reapers were trying to indoctrinate you. Perhaps it was just a dream. Perhaps ending the war with the push of a button didn’t seem climactic enough to your subconscious after everything you’ve been through. You were expecting to die. You were expecting to fight once you got here. You didn’t.” And, he thought, perhaps the sight of her father figure on that pile of bodies had been more than she could bear. Aside from the ramblings about what had happened once she’d gotten up here, she seemed together. She was aware of her situation and properly oriented. He just didn’t know. He didn’t think anyone would ever know what had truly happened up here.

“I want to see him,” she said.

“Sleep first,” he told her. Maybe rescue would come quickly enough that he could put her off for sufficient time to allow the body to be collected so that she didn’t have to see that tunnel of horrors again. However, if it didn’t, he would have to return to the beam to see if anyone had sent up supplies like he’d ordered and he couldn’t leave her alone. He only had the one pistol and she couldn’t shoulder a rifle with her injuries.

“Talk to me,” she said. “I like your voice.”

“Thanks, love,” he said, amused. “What do you want me to talk about?”

“Tell me about you,” she said.

“Fair enough,” he said. He knew all about her. Everyone did. “I was born in London in 2152, one of six children. My father was in the British military even before the Alliance was formed and is now retired. My mother is a doctor. As of a few weeks ago, they were all still alive. I was raised along the River Can about fifty kilometers from London in the town of Chelmsford. I joined the Alliance at eighteen with the goal of becoming a doctor, but I discovered a proficiency for stealth and sniping and was sent to infiltrator school and then ICT.”

“N7?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I was actually in the class behind yours.”

“It was a bitch, wasn’t it?” she asked sleepily.

“A right one,” he replied and began to run his fingers carefully through her shortened hair. She made a humming sound and turned her head to pillow it against his chest. He continued to talk, his voice growing quieter as she drifted off, until she finally fell asleep. He checked to make sure that she was merely sleeping rather than unconscious and then settled in to guard. He took the pistol from her and placed it beside his leg in easy reach. He realized just how exhausted he was and drew a stim capsule from the medic bag. He knew he had already overdone it on the stims and he was bound to crash hard soon, but he couldn’t risk falling asleep here when they didn’t know what could come through the tunnel at any moment. She had given so much for them. He would keep her safe.


	4. Chapter 4

She woke with a scream caught in her throat. A smooth British voice immediately began to soothe her, assuring her that she was safe and that he had her. She blinked away the nightmare and reached down to scratch her calf. Her hand met the floor and she looked at it in confusion before the pain hit her and she remembered. That calf wasn’t there. The bitch of it was, it itched and she had a cramp. She didn’t know how it was possible that the end of her thigh was screaming in pain where the limb had been removed; yet she could still feel a cramp in a calf that didn’t exist. It made her skin crawl. Her breathing quickened and she flexed her hands, looking for her rifle. Coats shifted behind her and a moment later, Eleanor was laid across her lap. She grasped the weapon and sighed in relief. “Thanks,” she said and sat back against him. Once again, he’d understood without having to be told. “I need to get out of here. I need to move.”

“I was hoping you would say that, actually,” he said. “I need to piss and we need to check on the beam port. I told Collins to send supplies up through it. We’re going to need to ration water soon and I don’t want you dehydrating.”

At the mention of needing to piss, she groaned and her face flushed as she realized that she was going to need help with that simple task and had no idea where, precisely, they were going to take care of that business. When she asked, he said, “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to make do. The chasm, perhaps? Give the keepers something else to clean up.” Something other than bodies, he meant. She pushed the thought away as he stood and helped her to her feet…foot. He shook his head and exchanged Eleanor for the pistol before lifting her into his arms. “I need to check your bandages before we do too much. Come along. I’ll give you a hand, darling. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

When they finished, she sat back in the tunnel as he peered under the bandages. He gave a nod and said, “I think I’ll be able to remove the medigel on those gunshots tomorrow. The burns are going to take more time. Your amputation site is a bit redder than I’d like and your temperature is a bit elevated, so I’m going to give you some more antibiotics.”

She waited while he treated her and then hooked her arm around his waist to help support her. She did not want to be carried again if she could help it. Unfortunately, the constant climbing over the chasm’s uneven flooring was utterly exhausting. She was beaded with sweat and shaking with exhaustion before they’d gone a hundred yards. He ended up carrying her anyway and scolding her for pushing herself too hard.

He stopped at the ramp and carried her to the central room. It was completely black but for the light from the sun that shone through and cast large shadows around the chamber. The Crucible’s remains blocked the entryway and he turned back. He paused before the tunnel and gave her a moment to brace herself. She really didn’t want to go back in there, but she did want to see Anderson for herself and they needed supplies. She nodded and he proceeded carefully. When she saw one of the keepers picking at one of the bodies, she shot it. Coats nodded approvingly. He knelt down in front of another pile and said, “Here you go, love. I’m so sorry.”

It was Anderson and he was most certainly dead, but when she reached out to examine his abdomen, there wasn’t a wound. Instead, he had burns over most of his body and some of his limbs were set at odd angles. He likely hadn’t survived the trip through the beam. He did not, however, die from a gunshot wound. She hadn’t killed the closest thing to a father that she’d ever had. She hated seeing him here, hated knowing that she would have to leave him here, hated being here. She closed her eyes but there was no relief.

“Remember when I found you on the bridge?” Coats asked suddenly. She nodded and he said, “What do you remember?”

“The breeze,” she said. “Real, cool air on my face. Smoke. Quiet. You.”

“Peace, right?” he asked. “Fleeting, but there. Think of that. Not this.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. She was so glad that he was here with her. She didn’t want to imagine what it would have been like dying alone in that room, trapped under the rubble and unable to escape as the thing that had saved them fell and ended her life. Her hand tightened around the pistol as if that would save her from her morbid thoughts. She felt her throat threaten to close as her breathing and heart rate sped. Peace, she thought. The bridge. The night. Him. She focused on the steady beat of his heart and felt her own slow. She wasn’t alone. She was alive. Every part of her body hurt in varying degrees of excruciating and she wasn’t entirely sure that she was still sane, but she wasn’t alone.

He rose and went to the glowing end of the tunnel where the beam was. A gear bag with an Alliance logo lay just inside on the sticky, gelatinous drying blood staining the floor. “Bless you, Collins,” Coats said. He looked between the beam and an empty boot and back to the beam. “I want to try something,” he said. “I wonder if this thing works both ways.” He bent down and she picked up the boot and tossed it in the direction of the beam. Coats spun and blocked it as it bounced back out and hit him in the back. “Guess not,” he said. “Damn.”

“Worth a try,” she said, though she thought it unlikely that she’d survive another trip through at this point. They would just have to wait for extraction and hope someone decided to investigate the wreckage or that comms got restored soon so that they could send their coordinates.

She spared a glance at Anderson as they left and said, “You know, I wondered…he said he’d come up behind me but that doesn’t make sense. He described exactly this and yet said he’d come in somewhere else and that the walls were moving. Where else could he have come up? And if he did come up behind me here, why wouldn’t he at least check and see that I was alive? No soldier is going to head into unknown occupied territory alone if there’s backup available. I don’t care how much of a rush we were in. He would have shot me up with medigel and we would have gone forward together. Also, he was behind me to begin with and I don’t know how long I was out from Harbinger’s beam, so what happened that took him so long? Did you see anyone after I came up?”

“I didn’t even see you,” he answered. “No one was moving as far as I could tell and we only got reports of one person coming up. Admiral Hackett may be able to tell us when he got here when they make it back.”

“None of it made sense,” she said. “The Illusive Man being here makes sense. Vendetta said that he had come to the Citadel to warn the Reapers. Anderson coming up behind me and being ahead of me doesn’t. And I was halfway across the catwalk before he said he saw something up ahead. I should have been able to see him. There’s only one entrance to that place.” She put her hand to her forehead and thought back. “And then the kid and the Crucible.”

“Darling, there were no children up here,” he said gently.

“Not a real child,” she clarified. “A projection of one. There was this kid on Earth that I saw playing on the day of the invasion. I watched him die. I’ve been having nightmares about him ever since. I chase him through this dark forest and before I get to him, he burns. The night before we hit Cronos Station, I dreamed that he ran to me only it wasn’t me. It was another me. Like the clone or something. But I watched us burn together. It struck me as odd that no one tried to help him. He was only five or six. Why wouldn’t anyone have helped him onto the shuttle? And Anderson didn’t see him. How did Anderson not see him?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, love,” Coats said.

“I’m just trying to work some things out in my head,” she said. “I think…when I went to Aratoht and Kenson took me back to her base, there was a Reaper artifact there. It was unshielded. I was captured and drugged for two days inside the facility and Rana said that it only took a few days to a week. The thing was inside my head. It gave me visions. I think…maybe I’ve been fighting indoctrination this whole time. Maybe the kid was never there at all and was a product of my mind, something to play on my sympathies. I just don’t know.”

“Well,” he said consideringly, “you have been exposed to an inordinate number of Reapers and Reaper tech. There was Sovereign and then Aratoht, the invasion on Earth, Tuchanka, Rannoch, Thessia, and then here again and taking a direct hit from a Reaper.”

“Don’t forget the supposedly dead Reaper we went into and got the IFF from,” she pointed out. “Or the proto-Reaper in the Collector base.”

He said, “I’m honestly surprised you’re not stark, raving mad. We’ve had leaders here with less direct exposure who’ve gone into the Reapers voluntarily and then ordered their people not to fight.”

“I think it was EDI who once said that if they could indoctrinate someone high enough in the war effort, they could easily take us down,” she said. “Who was in a better position for it than me? Maybe Hackett or Anderson, but if they could get me, they could keep the galaxy divided. Benezia described oily shadows and that’s what I’ve seen in my dreams and when the Illusive Man appeared. The kid, the Catalyst, its logic was entirely circular. More salvation through destruction crap. And choices that weren’t choices at all…. Control, like the Illusive Man wanted. Merging synthetic and organic like Saren wanted. Those were both options the Reapers put in their heads. It thought that being forced to kill EDI and the geth would steer me away from destroying them. It was wrong. I beat it, but does it mean anything if it was all in my head?”

“Of course it does,” he said. “I’ll admit, I don’t entirely follow because I wasn’t there, but whether it was real or not, you still resisted. You stood fast. You did what no one else has been able to do. And you did, in fact, destroy them. I don’t know about EDI or the geth, but do you honestly think that they went to war with any more expectation of survival than we had?”

“No,” she said. “EDI was afraid. She came anyway.”

He said, “There you go, then, darling. They found something bigger than themselves that they were willing to die for. That makes them people in my book. Now, would you like to go back to our hidey-hole or are you up for some recon?”

“What do you suggest?” she asked.

“I want to take a look round this chasm,” he said. “I want to see if there are any more tunnels. I’ve been thinking about it and I believe this is part of the keeper network. If it is, then there may be a way to get back to the Presidium without having to scale the broken tower. We’re on the underside of the Citadel, but I’m not sure if it’s safe to try to get back to the other side through the central chamber, especially with all the structural damage.”

“Can we rest and eat and then go?” she asked. “I don’t want to give out on you and leave you carrying dead weight.”

“All right,” he said.

“Have you slept at all?” she asked.

“I’ve got stims,” he answered.

“Not good enough,” she said. “Let me take a nap now and then we’ll go explore a bit. When we come back, I’ll take first watch.” She wasn’t sure how she managed it given her weakened condition but apparently her voice still carried enough of the command tone to it that he didn’t argue. Or, maybe, he was just that exhausted. Stims only went so far.

He settled her against him again in the tunnel and she laid Eleanor across her lap. She knew with the slug trying to work its way out of her shoulder that she couldn’t fire the rifle, but it made her feel better to have it in her hands. The gun had become something of a lucky totem for her. She had an almost superstitious attachment to it and knew that she would never willingly let it go. _Without my rifle, I am nothing._

Coats’ arms came around her and she let her head fall back against his chest. She could get used to this, she thought. That was not a good thing. Shepard didn’t let men get to her. She stood alone. After they were rescued, chances were that she would never see him again. Even if she did, this enforced intimacy would end. If anyone else had come up for her or if they hadn’t had that last quick fuck, there likely would be nothing more to this than two soldiers looking out for each other. She certainly wouldn’t feel this kind of intimacy with Garrus or Vega.

Hell, Vega probably would never let her live it down if he’d had to help her take a piss. Garrus would be doing these things for her, all the while ribbing her about how she was going to pay him back and how he’d been the one to literally pull her ass out of the biggest fire of them all, but there would be no intimacy. Vega would do it, too. She’d seen how he reacted when Ann Bryson had been in danger. Vega was a softie when people were hurt. He’d have teased her mercilessly later, though. Cortez wouldn’t. He’d be considerate, courteous, kind because that was just who he was. He wouldn’t tease her. He wouldn’t make jokes about it. It would never be mentioned again once it was over. But none of them would have left her thinking about waking up beside them in a real bed.

Her calf spasmed and she groaned in frustration. The phantom pains were maddening because there was nothing to do. There was no muscle to massage. Coats reached forward and drew her good leg up. “Watch,” he said and began to dig his thumbs into the calf that was there. “Don’t look at your foot. Just look at my hands.” She did and after a few minutes of intense focus, the spasm began to ease. She breathed a sigh of relief and sank back. “Better?” he asked. When she nodded, he said, “Sometimes it helps to find a way to trick the brain into thinking that the problem is being solved. My dad lost his leg below the knee. He had a whole bag of tricks for when the pain got bad. Mirrors, medicine, biotic massage. I even saw him stab his prosthetic with a knife once. Said it served as a reset for his brain.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.” He reached for the bag and drew out another stim capsule. She stopped him and said, “I’m tired, but I can’t sleep. You rest now.”

“I don’t know when I’ll wake up if I sleep now,” he said.

“I’ll wake you up if I start nodding off or if something happens,” she said. “Come around and lie down.”

He was reluctant but eventually agreed. She slid back against the bulkhead and he laid his head down on her uninjured thigh. She trailed her fingers through his hair and he wrapped an arm around her waist as his silver eyes drifted closed. Within moments, he was out. She arranged the pistol and her rifle for easy access and then watched him unabashedly as he slept. The lines of stress faded from his face and only then did she realize just how much strain he’d been under and how hard he’d been fighting to keep himself going. He looked years younger like this and she had to admit that he was incredibly handsome. He rolled onto his side and nuzzled her waist before settling once more and she leaned back against the bulkhead to keep watch.

It was over. The war was over. She’d been fighting constantly for more than three years—the parts she’d been alive for, at least—and it was finally over. The galaxy was saved. The Reapers were destroyed. She could only hope that the effects of the Crucible had spread beyond the Sol system, but even if they hadn’t, the fleets now had a fighting chance. The bulk of the Reaper forces had been here. They could go system by system if necessary and take out the rest. They knew how to do it now. The nightmare was over.

She didn’t know where she would go now or what she would do. She hadn’t thought beyond the war. She didn’t know if she was going to stay with the Alliance or even with the Spectres, and honestly, didn’t know if she would be able to if she decided she wanted to do so. She hoped the _Normandy_ had made it. She worried about her crew, and depending on how damaged the Citadel was, the ship might be the last home she had left.

It hit her suddenly that she was free. She could do anything she wanted. She’d be welcomed on any planet in the galaxy except Kar’Shan and she had no desire to go to the batarian homeworld. She could see Tali’s house on Rannoch where her friend had promised to build a room just for her. She could go to Thessia with Liara and help rebuild. She could visit Palaven with Garrus and, hell, given her friendship with him and the Primarch, she could probably live there if she wanted to deal with having to wear an enviro-suit outside all of the time. She could go to Tuchanka and see Wrex’ and Bakarah’s babies. She could go back to Earth and help there. She could go anywhere.

She considered her options as Coats slept in her lap. His arm never moved from her waist and he pressed closer to her until his lips rested against her abdomen. She couldn’t see how that position could be comfortable, but she didn’t move him. If the circumstances had been different and if she wasn’t in so much pain, she’d have likely found his position a bit arousing. Now, though, it just drew tenderness from her. He’d done so much for her that he didn’t have to do. He’d taken her leg, but he’d saved her life. He’d kept her sane in this place. There was no way she could ever repay him.

She let him sleep for hours until her eyes grew heavy and her head began to fall against her chest. Finally, she woke him. He stretched and blinked up at her in confusion before he remembered where he was and sat up. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” she answered. “I’m just falling asleep.”

“We can take care of that,” he said and moved behind her again. “I’m up. Rest now.”


	5. Chapter 5

She woke a few hours later from another nightmare. Again, Coats was there to calm her and help her orient herself in the dark tunnel. His hand brushed gently over her hair and his other thumb stroked her jaw. “You’re all right, love,” he said. “You’re safe. It’s over.”

Without thinking, she leaned forward and pressed her dry, hot lips to his. She knew she shouldn’t. What they’d shared before the battle and what was happening now should be separate. He was doing his duty by her, nothing more. His care was kindness and she was stepping over the boundary. To her surprise, however, he responded to her. His lips brushed against hers and his tongue slid gently between them. Before, he’d made her feel alive. Now, he made her feel cherished. There was no pressure, no expectation for anything more. This was simple comfort and he gave it freely. Something inside of her softened and she tried to deny its existence. He whispered her name when they drew apart and trailed his fingers along her cheek.

“You’re too hot, darling,” he finally said. “I need to check your leg again.”

She saw his brow furrow slightly when he looked at it. When he gave her another shot of antibiotics, she said, “It’s infected, isn’t it?”

“I was hoping it was just irritation,” he said. “You’re getting red streaks up from the wound and you didn’t react when I pressed against one of the darker spots. Your temperature is up into a full-blown fever now as well. I don’t want to make you move, but I’m afraid it’s becoming imperative that we find a way to get you out of here.”

“Cut the tissue back if you have to,” she said.

He shook his head. “You know it won’t buy you much time. It’s in your blood, love. I won’t keep cutting on you unless it’s going to help. That’s a last resort if we can’t find a way out.”

“Let’s go, then,” she said.

Her head swam a bit when he picked her up and she bit her lip as she fought back the nausea that tried to take her meal from her. He said, “Maybe if I add the antibiotics to an IV…I’m a medic, not a chemist. For all I know, the drugs I have may not even target the type of infection you have. I can’t tell at a glance. Or it could be resistant and need something stronger. I can set your bones and I can sew you up and I can cut your leg off, but there’s a reason we don’t prescribe medication for long-term treatment. We’re supposed to keep you alive to get you to the doctors. And I don’t know how much longer I can do that.”

She put her hand against his face and said, “Nick, you’re doing fine. You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty and no one, least of all me, can blame you if it doesn’t work. I wouldn’t have even gotten this far if you hadn’t come. I’d have died in that rubble pile when the Crucible came down.”

“I can blame myself,” he said. “Turns out the savior of the galaxy had more need of me as a doctor than a sniper after all.”

“Stop,” she said. “No self-recrimination, either. You don’t get to blame yourself. That’s an order.”

“I outrank you, Commander,” he pointed out.

“Spectre authority,” she countered.

“I don’t think it works quite that way, Shepard,” he said as he climbed over one of the raised platforms.

“I’m a Spectre and I saved the galaxy,” she said. “It works however I want it to.”

“Touché,” he replied. “Fine, you win, _Spectre_.”

“That’s what I thought, _Major_ ,” she responded.

They found two more tunnels that led nowhere before her energy gave out and she fell asleep in his arms. She woke when he returned to their space. The tension in his body alerted even her sleeping mind that there was a problem. She had the pistol up before her eyes were open. What she saw made her pause. “Duct rat,” she whispered about the child who was digging through their medical bag. “Don’t scare her off. She can lead us out.”

He nodded and said, “If you’re hungry, there’s food in the pack. Water, too.” The kid’s head shot up and her eyes widened. “Don’t run,” Coats said. “We won’t hurt you. I’ll give you everything in those bags if you show us how to get to the hospital. This is Commander Shepard and she’s hurt.”

“Commander Shepard?” the kid asked. “They said she was dead.”

“It’s me,” Shepard said. “I’ll even let you see my dog tags if you want. Do you know how to get out of here?”

“Of course,” the kid said. “I don’t think he can carry you through, though. Some of these passages are really small. You’re going to have to crawl.”

“I can do that,” she said, hoping it was true. “What’s your name?”

“The bigger kids call me Cricket,” she answered. “Who’s he?”

“This is my friend, Nick,” she said. “He’s one of the soldiers who helped us get up here to fire the Crucible.”

“Okay,” Cricket said. “It’s a long way back. I came here because I wanted to see the Crucible myself. I found your stuff and since no one was here, I thought you didn’t need it.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “What’s going on out there?”

“It’s a mess,” Cricket said, looking through the pack. She pulled out a nutrient bar and spoke around it as she ate. “There’s only generator power keeping the life support systems going and most of the ward arms are broken. There are giant holes in the hull of the station and most of the buildings are just dust. The Presidium ring is all broken up, but you can get around if you’re careful and know where to go. The hospital is still standing, but it’s so full of people that they’re treating patients in tents outside. There’s no pain medication left anywhere on the station, so you can hear the screaming for blocks. Everyone’s still walking around in shock. Some people haven’t even washed the dust off yet and they look like husks,” she finished with a shudder.

“Are the Reaper forces dead?” Shepard asked.

“Oh. I thought you already knew that,” the girl said. “Yeah. They just fell over. C-Sec is burning them in one of the abandoned areas. The ones out in space are still just hanging there. The war’s over. You saved us. Huh. Now I get to save you. What does that make me?”

“Our hero,” Shepard answered sincerely. The girl’s face lit up and she remembered Thane talking about Mouse as a child and his need to be remembered. Shepard activated her omni-tool and took a holo of the girl.

Cricket showed them a panel at the far end of the tunnel. It led to a cramped passageway and Coats looked at her for a long moment. “Can you do this?” he asked.

“I can do anything I need to,” she said. “I just might be slow.”

It was excruciating. She had to stop every few minutes to catch her breath and let the pain recede. She gritted her teeth and forced herself another foot. It was easier to crawl on her hands and knee, but the weight she had to distribute onto her wounded shoulder to compensate for the missing leg overcame the effects of the medigel and left her shoulder throbbing in time with her thigh. The burned skin on her arms protested and threatened to override the other pains in her body. They had to stop more than once so that Coats could apply more medigel when the skin split and she began to bleed again. She requested a stim and he denied her, staying it would just push more of the infection through her body quicker. When the ducts grew tighter and forced them to low crawl, she fought not to cry out every time she had to drag her injured thigh forward across the deck.

It seemed like they would never reach the end of it. Cricket was patient when she began to fade in and out of consciousness and would wait for Coats to rouse her so that she could move again. The girl reminded Shepard of herself in another life and her overtaxed brain began to imagine that she was back with the Reds, sneaking through somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be, with Abby and Gabe. She heard Coats tell Cricket that she was delirious and tried to protest, but it was hard to be convincing when she couldn’t remember her argument, so she gave up. When he stopped and forced her to choke down another nutrigel, she fought the urge to gag. His eyes grew more and more concerned.

“How much farther, Cricket?” he asked.

“It opens up in about a hundred meters,” the girl answered. “After that, we have to climb up a shaft. There’s a ladder, but we might have to figure out a way to get her up. I’m a biotic. Not a very good one yet because my parents died before they had a chance to get me training, but I can lift. I think if I go first and you go last to catch her if I drop her, we can get her up.”

“I can climb a damn ladder,” Shepard muttered. The floor felt cool against her overheated face and she debated the merits of moving as she added, “I’ve climbed lots of ladders. There were ladders on Mars and on Tuchanka and in the Archives and people were shooting at me then. No one’s shooting now.”

“I’m sure you’re excellent at climbing ladders,” Coats said, “but you won’t get to show off your skills unless you get there, so let’s keep moving, shall we?”

“The floor’s cold,” she told him.

“When we get out of here, I’ll find you a cold glass of water and a cooling blanket,” he told her. “For now, though, we need to move.”

“Are the Reapers coming?” she asked, her heart beginning to pound. She had to stop the Reapers. That's why she'd been back. She had to...do something.

“No, love,” he said. “The Reapers are dead. You want to find out if there’s news of your crew, don’t you?”

“Garrus and Tali were hurt,” she remembered. She pushed herself forward again.

“Thought that would get you moving,” he said from behind her.

It turned out that her ladder climbing skills had suffered greatly since being crushed and losing a leg. She was barely able to drag herself to her foot and pulling herself up the ladder proved to be too great a task. Her fever was raging now and her head spun wildly. Pins and needles were making their way up her thigh and when she pressed against her skin, it made a slight crackling sound. She leaned down to sniff at it and recoiled. She knew that smell. Coats’ eyes met hers; she saw the open concern written there but no surprise. He already knew.

“I’m dying,” she said weakly.

“Not today,” he said firmly. “Cricket, go ahead and lift her up.”

Her body tingled and began to rise. She saw the blue glow of dark energy rippling around her and looked up to see the girl glowing as well. She bore a look of intense concentration on her face as she repeated the mnemonics to keep the power moving. The girl sighed with obvious relief when she set Shepard down onto the floor.

“I did it!” she crowed.

“Thanks,” Shepard said. “You’re something special, kid. You ever decide to join the Alliance, let me know. I’ll put a good word in for you.”

“My mom used to talk about me joining the Alliance,” Cricket said sadly as Coats came over the top of the ladder. The tunnel they’d come out in was large enough to stand and he picked Shepard up.

“Think about it,” Shepard said. She hated the idea of a child as bright and talented as this one getting lost in the ducts. From what Bailey and Thane had told her, the keepers had a tendency to rearrange them and a path that was safe one day was deadly the next. What the girl needed was a family. She needed a home. She needed what Shepard had never had until the Alliance—a chance. She decided to find Conrad and ask what the procedure was for adopting a duct rat. If Shepard had a home left to go to, she wasn’t going to leave this girl behind. She whispered to Coats, “I’m going to adopt her. I raised a krogan. How hard can a teenage girl be?”

“Have you ever met a teenage girl?” he asked. “I think it’s a little premature to be thinking about that given the current state of uncertainty, but we’ll figure something out for her. We won’t just abandon her.”

“Good,” Shepard said. “If I don’t make it, get her to Conrad Verner. He’s a little nuts and kind of misguided, but he’s eager. He wants to help people. He started an orphanage. Spent everything he had getting the kids off-world when the Reapers attacked. He’ll make sure she’s taken care of, especially if you tell him it was my last request. He’s…a little obsessed with me.”

“We aren’t going to worry about that,” he said. “We’ll get you to the hospital soon.”

“Good,” she told him. “Everything’s getting kind of fuzzy. Wake me up when we get there.”

“Shepard? Stay with me, love,” he said as her eyes closed. The urgency in his voice made her want to look at him, but she was so _tired_. She’d never been this tired before in her life.

“Just a nap,” she muttered as the darkness closed in around her. She heard him calling her name as if from a distance and felt his pace increase, but she couldn’t fight the forces pulling her under.


	6. Chapter 6

When she woke, she was in a hospital bed. Doctors stood over her and spoke to each other with varying degrees of concern. It reminded her of waking up on Lazarus Station and she wondered where she was. A familiar face leaned over her and said in a soft French accent, “Commander Shepard, try to relax. You are safe now. You’re in Huerta Memorial.”

“Dr. Michel?” she asked. “Where’s Coats?”

“Are you cold?” the doctor asked.

“No,” she said. “Major Coats. Where is he?”

“Oh! The man who brought you in. I’m not sure at the moment, but I’m certain he’ll be back in a day or two. He’s come in several times to check on you.”

“How long have I been here?” she asked.

“Six weeks,” the doctor answered. “Lucky for you, we got a shuttle from Earth the day you were brought in and it had medical supplies. We’ve kept you sedated so you could heal.”

“And the _Normandy_?” she asked.

“We just got word from them yesterday, Commander,” she said. “They’re all accounted for and should return in a week. Your entire crew made it. The ones still on Earth have come up and visited you a few times. They’re helping with the relief efforts now.”

The doctor filled her in on everything that had occurred since the firing of the Crucible. The recovery efforts were ongoing. What was left of C-Sec had been stretched thin with keeping order and getting badly needed help to the survivors until the turians and humans had begun pitching in. Everyone wanted to help and all of the races were working together. The peace between them might not last, but it was there for now. Long-range comms were still down but being repaired; the relays had been damaged but not destroyed. The salarians were working on repairs. The quarians were sharing the foods grown on their liveships with the turians. The krogan and asari were helping with cleanup. The batarians were aiding the refugees. The volus were managing the donations rolling in from those in less-affected areas.

Her crew were not the only visitors she had. Once word spread that she was awake, Grunt and Zaeed installed themselves as guards at the door. Primarch Victus, Major Kirrahe, the Council, Admiral Hackett, Matriarch Aethyta, Kolyat Krios, Admiral Raan, and more came to speak with her or just sit beside her and give her news. Diana Allers requested an interview and she gave it. When they were finished, Allers surprised her by hugging her and saying, “Thank you, Shepard, for everything.”

The one person who didn’t come was Coats. As days turned into a week and the _Normandy_ crew returned, she was kept busy, but she couldn’t deny that the quick look she gave to the door whenever it opened was in the hopes of seeing him come through. He didn’t. A week turned into two and then three. She was released from the hospital and returned home to her apartment on the Strip, which had somehow managed to survive with only some damage. Garrus and Liara moved in with her. The rest of her crew bought up the remainder of the floor but for Admiral Hackett’s apartment on the other side of the odd, blocky building. Still, there was no word from him.

She saw him once, being interviewed by Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani. Either al-Jilani had softened since the war or Coats’ charm had rubbed off on her as well because the reporter wasn’t her typical aggressive self. She all but fawned over him. He didn’t seem to notice. What struck Shepard was that he was on the Citadel. He was here. He just hadn’t come. That was all of the answer she needed about what had transpired between them. The war was over. He’d come after her out of the same “no one gets left behind” mentality that would have driven her to the beam had their situations been reversed rather than out of any emotional connection formed during their interlude before the final push. She tried to push him out of her mind. It wasn’t incredibly difficult considering all of the other things that demanded her attention, but in the dark hours of the night when nightmares brought her out of sleep gasping for air and reaching for her rifle, she thought about waking to his arms and his voice and she missed him.

 

* * *

 

Three months later, the Council approached her about joining them. She hated politics but had no desire to remain solely with the Alliance. The offer presented her with the opportunity to continue the momentum she’d built during the war with inter-species cooperation, so she accepted. She presented Admiral Hackett with her resignation and gave the _Normandy_ to one of the Council’s newest Spectres: Garrus Vakarian. He stared at her with mandibles agape and finally said, “Shepard, you can’t…this is…the _Normandy_ is your spirit. You can’t just give her away.”

“I’m not just giving her away,” Shepard said. “The _Normandy_ is a warship, not a transport. She should be out there fighting, not sitting in dry dock waiting for me to need a ride. I’m not giving you my spirit, Garrus. I’m giving you my legacy. Anderson was my mentor and the first _Normandy_ was his ship. When I became a Spectre and he stepped back from active duty, he gave her to me. I was your mentor and this _Normandy_ was my ship. My place isn’t out there anymore. Yours is. It’s right that you take her. I can’t imagine anything that could honor Anderson’s memory more than to do for you what he did for me, and I can’t picture anyone else as her captain. You’ve been my XO in practice if not in name for years. It’s your turn to take the bridge. My only condition on this is that you keep Joker as your pilot. No one else helms her. He and EDI will take care of you.”

“I’ll take care of her, Shepard,” he said solemnly. “And if you ever need us, you just say the word and we’re there. She’ll always be your home.”

It was bittersweet watching him fly away on what a part of her would always view as _her_ ship. She would miss it. The _Normandy_ wasn’t just a ship. It was a part of her. However, the sadness was overwhelmed by pride and a sense of rightness. Garrus had come so far and been through so much to become the man he was today. Some cycles were meant to complete themselves and this was one of the best ones. Garrus had followed her in the same way that she had followed Anderson and now she was doing for him what her mentor had done for her. It was a new chapter in both of their lives. “Fair winds, my friend,” she said as the ship faded into the distance.

“That couldn’t have been easy,” a voice said from behind her.

She turned and tried to pull the mask back into place as she said, “Major Coats.”

“General Coats now,” he said. “It seems we’ve both been promoted.”

“I hadn’t heard,” she said. “Congratulations.”

“And to you, Councilor,” he said. “You look good, Shepard.”

He looked good. Her eyes roved over his form, taking in the new bars on his dress blues and the shining medals pinned to his broad chest. He was clean-shaven and his dark hair had been smoothed down. She couldn’t bring herself to look into his silver eyes. She couldn’t bear seeing the polite distance in them when she was already so raw. She crossed her arms over her chest and rocked back onto her good leg to take the weight off of the prosthetic she was still getting used to. “General suits you,” she said.

“Bullshit,” he answered. “I’m stuck behind a desk dealing with the brass all day. I’m a marine. I don’t know how to play politics.”

“I’ve learned that it’s mostly not shooting a lot of people that you want to shoot,” she said.

Before he could reply, a young, blonde woman called out, “Nicholas! There you are.” She slid her arm into his and beamed up at him. “We’re going to be late. Who’s your friend? Oh! You’re Commander Shepard!”

“Councilor Shepard now,” Coats said.

“Right!” the woman exclaimed. “It’s such an honor to meet you! I’m Ivanna Coats. Nick’s told me so much about you.”

“Good things, I hope,” Shepard said with a smile she didn’t feel as she shook the manicured hand the woman offered. Her eyes locked on the ring on the woman’s left hand. She should have known better than to take the lack of one on his finger to mean anything. A lot of soldiers chose not to wear their wedding rings.

“Absolutely!” the woman said in a voice that reminded her of Traynor. “He talks about you a lot.”

“‘Vanna, darling,” Coats said, “I’m sure the councilor is very busy. We should probably get going.”

“What?” she asked innocently. “She’s like your hero. And I get to meet her. That’s exciting.”

Shepard said, “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Coats. I should get going, though. Take care, General.”

She didn’t wait for a response before jogging off to the transport terminal. Only once she was safely ensconced in the privacy of the skycar did she let her mask drop. She had no claim to Coats. She wasn’t going to be the bitch who ruined his marriage over an ill-advised, spur-of-the-moment, heat-of-battle, imminent-death tryst, especially when he’d risked so much to save her and had clearly only been trying to be kind when her pain-wracked brain had tried to read too much into it. He was too nice of a person to tell her to fuck off when he’d just cut her damn leg off and she was riding the border of death anyway. She began to massage what was left of her thigh in a movement that was becoming so second-nature that she didn’t realize that she was doing it.

 

* * *

 

Coats was _everywhere_. The Citadel had been rebuilt faster than the cities on Earth thanks to the keepers and was currently playing host to both the Council and the various races’ governing bodies as there was not yet anywhere on Earth that could accommodate them. Buildings were being rebuilt, but the infrastructure itself was not yet back in place. Shepard thought that it made the Citadel a prime target, and with Sparatus’ help, convinced the Council to allow the Hierarchy and Alliance to take over defensive security while C-Sec was getting back on its feet. Victus had placed General Corinthus over the Hierarchy forces while Hackett had placed General Coats over the Alliance’s. She was now going to be dealing with daily briefings from him and working alongside him to coordinate security.

“Why?” she moaned into her hands while sitting on the couch with Liara and a glass of wine. “Why didn’t I just keep my damn armor on?”

“What are you talking about?” Liara asked.

“You don’t already know?” Shepard asked her. She’d come to take for granted that Liara knew everything.

“I have no idea, Shepard,” she said, “but maybe if you tell me, I can help.”

Shepard knew she could keep a secret. Hell, Liara already knew almost all of hers anyway. So she said, “Coats and I…had a ‘we’re about to die, so why the hell not’ moment at the FOB in London. It probably wouldn’t have mattered later, but then he came up the beam and saved me and we were trapped together for days. Then he disappeared for a month and showed up again with a hot little blonde number hanging all over him wearing a ring and his last name. And now I have to work with him every day. I’m the dirty mistress. I’m the other woman. Again. Is there something I can’t see tattooed on my forehead that says, ‘Cheat on your woman with me’?”

“Oh, Shepard,” Liara said. “I’m so sorry.”

“From now on, you are to vet every man I so much as look at for more than two seconds to make sure there’s not someone waiting in the wings,” Shepard said. “Not that I’m likely to repeat that mistake any time soon.” She drained her wine and went into the kitchen. Killing enemies had always been her preferred method of dealing with stress but that wasn’t her job anymore, so she settled for hacking up vegetables instead.

“We’re out of hot sauce,” Liara called out.

“Shit,” she grumbled and scraped the mutilated vegetables into a bowl before tossing them into a cooler. Her heart was aching, her stomach was churning, and her leg was killing her. The missing limb insisted that it was being stabbed repeatedly, so she looked down and jabbed the knife into the prosthetic. The pain receded but didn’t leave.

“You’re going to have to stop doing that,” Liara said. “It’s becoming a habit and what are you going to do when they graft your new one in next week? That one’s going to have feeling in it.”

“I’ll only do it once, then, won’t I?” Shepard grumbled. “I’m going to take a bath.” She limped up the stairs and into the bedroom.

 

* * *

 

Chakwas grafted her new leg in a week later. It meant more physical therapy but also that she was able to step away from her duties for a few days while she recovered. She passed Coats on to Sparatus with a sigh of relief. The newly-made general hadn’t said or done anything untoward. He was the picture of professionalism and she was proud of herself for maintaining that façade herself. That didn’t make it any less difficult to face him every day when she wanted to ask why he hadn’t bothered to mention his wife while they were trapped up on the Citadel and talking about their lives and families or why he’d come on to her in the first place. He seemed determined to act like it had never happened, so she had done her best to do so as well.

She cut through the water in the hydrotherapy pool and tried to push thoughts of him away. There were other things to focus on. She was trying to arrange for an inter-galactic security fleet; obtain Council status for the krogan, quarians, and drell; fend off Sparatus’ advances—she knew _he_ was married—and a host of breeding requests from the krogan; investigate claims of Cerberus holdouts and assign Spectres to investigate; and get both the krogan and the drell new colonization rights so that the drell could get off of Kahje if they wished. Her plate was just as full as it ever had been as a Spectre. She simply did not have time to get caught up worrying over a man.

She pulled herself out of the pool and went to the treadmill. She hated running in place, but it was too much of a hassle to request guards to go with her in order to run the station and her stamina still wasn’t where it had been. After five kilometers, she had to stop. The new leg was better than the stiff prosthetic and it had helped the phantom pains to have actual sensation for her mind to register, but she was still getting used to it and had been warned repeatedly to listen to her body. It was warning her that if she didn’t want to spend half the night in the hot tub, she should slow down, so she went through her yoga routine before heading out to the Spectre range. No longer being a soldier didn’t mean that she was willing to let her skills get soft.

By the time she dragged herself into the apartment, she was drained. She stopped by the office to say hello to Liara and Javik who were working on their book before struggling up the stairs to her bedroom. She’d just laid down when her omni-tool pinged with a message from Jack stating that she was on shore leave and needed a place to crash. Shepard told her to come on and then collapsed back onto the bed, hoping that she’d exhausted herself enough to keep the nightmares at bay. When her traitorous mind started telling her that she wanted Coats there beside her, she forced herself to remember him with the blonde. She should have asked if he was married or otherwise involved. He should have volunteered the information, but she should have asked rather than assuming. She’d have saved herself a lot of guilt and sorrow if she had. Somehow, the stoic Commander Shepard who refused to let anyone get that close had finally fallen, and this time, it was for a married man. She wondered if some people were just destined to be alone.


	7. Chapter 7

Shepard rubbed her thigh and gritted her teeth before giving in to the need to move. She’d been stuck in this meeting for over six hours now and had spent most of that time in one of the odd chairs that were supposedly designed to accommodate all races but just ended up being equally uncomfortable for everyone. Her leg was cramping, her head ached from the constant drone of voices arguing around her, and Coats’ silver eyes were searing into her.

It had been a month since she’d seen him at the docks with his pretty little wife and she’d run into the couple once in the interim when she, Vega, and Cortez had gone out to dinner. Coats had seen her as they’d come in and had nodded. He’d at least had the decency not to have his hands all over the woman, but simply seeing him kiss her had been enough to ruin Shepard’s appetite. They hadn’t stayed long before she’d suggested going to the casino bar. She’d spent the evening nursing some asari drink while Vega and Cortez had torn it up on the dance floor until a turian had decided to use a line reminiscent of the one on Omega about having a mate and a ship but only one on the Citadel. And turians were supposed to be the faithful ones! She’d taken him to the floor and told him to go back to his wife before calling it a night and going home.

Now Coats was watching her. He had paid more attention to her than to the briefing, only bringing his focus in when asked to report on the security situation. Garrus’ last report had been promising. There wasn’t much left of Cerberus and their activities were splintered. The relays were being so closely monitored that any potential attack would have to come from within the system, and so far, people were still more inclined to work together than at odds. Even the batarians were cooperating. Shepard was just waiting for a new request from them for an embassy.

“There is one more thing,” Coats said as she paced behind the table in an effort to ease the cramping in her thigh. “C-Sec has informed me that we seem to have a serial killer on the Citadel.”

“What?” Shepard asked. “Why didn’t you mention this sooner? Why hasn’t Bailey brought this to our attention?”

He stood and said, “Murders happen all the time, Shepard. It isn’t so much that it’s a serial killer that leads me to mention it. It’s what he’s done to his victims.”

“Well?” she asked. “Spit it out, General.”

He shifted uncomfortably and said, “I’ve actually requested that the lead investigator on the case give you the briefing.”

“Kolyat,” she said as the door opened and the drell stepped through.

“Councilor,” he said with a nod. He greeted the rest before stepping up to the table and calling up a holo of the wards. “Over the past month, we have discovered the bodies of four homicide victims on Tayseri Ward. All are between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five years old. Three were Alliance soldiers. All four were human females with light skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. At first, we thought the similarity in their appearance was coincidental as that set of traits is the most commonplace among your race. However, there was one thing in particular that stood out and connected the victims beyond the method in which they were murdered. All four had a letter carved into their bodies. These are arranged in chronological order.” The ward disappeared and was replaced by a series of images. He’d cropped them so that only the pertinent area was displayed. The series of letters was immediately recognizable: S-H-E-P. “It was only with the last victim that we recognized the potential link,” he said as all eyes in the room turned to face her.

“Show me the victims,” she said. His brow ridges furrowed but he complied. It wasn’t as if she had never seen a dead body before. Hell, she’d watched her own clone die. These women were not as exact in their appearance, but they were similar enough to her to make the threat instantly apparent. The dead women looked like her and it appeared as if someone was carving her name into them. _I'm gonna carve your name instead of mine into my next victim as thanks, got anyone you need dead (haha)?_ She put her hand up to her ear and activated her comm. “EDI, do you still have records of my messages from the Collector mission?”

“Yes, Shepard,” EDI answered. “Would you like me to forward something specific to you?”

“After we got Jack from _Purgatory_ , I received a death threat from someone claiming to be one of the inmates there,” Shepard said. “Find it and send it to my omni-tool, please.” Her omni-tool pinged and she called up the message so that the others could see. “I don’t know for sure that this is related, but it might give you a starting point.” Coats’ lips moved and his face hardened as he read the message.

 _ **Subject:** (Untitled)_  
_**From:** (Error, Invalid Sender Name)_  
_Hey Shepherd heard I have you to thank you for getting out of Purgatory (sent a ship to round me up, but they didn't weapons-check good enough)! I'm gonna carve your name instead of mine into my next victim as thanks, got anyone you need dead (haha)? You did take a shot at me though on my way out so I have to kill you, you know how it goes. Dad taught me that you let anybody hurt you, they get ideas so you make sure to send a message, not like I'm sending now, though! See you around, the people who live here are coming back and it's showtime! Look around for your name, I'll make sure you find it before I find you! Billy…_

“Who else knew about this, Councilor?” Kolyat asked.

“EDI, Miranda, and Chambers,” Shepard answered. Miranda and Kelly had read all of her mail and EDI scanned everything that came through.

“Do you know who this Billy is?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “There were a lot of people on that ship. There were two that I spoke to directly but I never got their names. It’s been so long that I couldn’t even tell you what they looked like aside from that they were adult white human males. One asked me to take him with me until Garrus told him we were there for Jack. He didn’t strike me as particularly threatening, but the other made my skin crawl. I wasn’t really focused on them, though. I just wanted to get Jack and get out. Garrus was there. He may remember more than I did. Your father was my other teammate. If he were here… I’m sorry, Kolyat, I can’t even call up the man’s face in my mind and probably wouldn’t recognize him in a lineup.”

“You can’t remember anything else?” Coats asked.

“No,” she said. “I only remember the message because of the line about carving my name into his next victim. Death threats weren’t uncommon. I reported it and kept an ear out, but I didn’t hear anything. We were getting ready to go through the Omega 4 relay and it just…wasn’t important. If I thought about it at all, I just attributed it to some sick bastard trying to rattle me. Unfortunately, finding a list of inmates won’t be easy. _Purgatory_ is gone. I killed the warden.” She thought back to that mission. So much had happened since that the details had become fuzzy. She said, “Kuril did say something about the prisoners’ governments paying for the inmates’ upkeep and that if they didn’t, he would release the prisoner onto one of their planets at an unspecified time and place. The Alliance may have records if they weren’t destroyed.”

“I’ll look into it,” Coats said. “In the meantime, Shepard, you need a guard detail.”

“I am not dealing with any more guards than I already have to,” she said. “I’m a Spectre. I killed Reapers for a living. I am not worried about one psychopathic human who gets close to his victims to kill them.”

“You’re a _retired_ Spectre,” Sparatus pointed out. “And one who is still recovering from her wounds. It’s only been six months since the war ended and you have just received your new leg graft. You cannot possibly be back in condition yet.”

She said, “I run five kilometers a day. I can still handle my Widow. And I took down General Corinthus in a spar last week. I may not be at my best yet, but even on my worst day, I could still take down a crazy criminal. Besides, half of my crew still lives in my apartment building, I have roommates, and my apartment is probably one of the most secure places on the Citadel. He’d be a fool to come after me directly.”

“And when you’re not in your apartment?” Coats asked.

“I’m still me,” she said. “No guards. They’d just get in my way. Kolyat, keep me up to date on your investigation. Forward everything you have to me and to Agent Vakarian.” She would get Liara on it and she wanted Garrus’ input.

“Yes, Councilor,” he said and left.

The others departed shortly after and she began to collect her things. Coats came back in as she was leaving and she pulled up short. His hands grasped her shoulders, and before she had time to register what he was doing, his mouth came down on hers. She stiffened as she fought back the urge to soften against him and allow him access to her. _He’s married_ , she reminded herself. That didn’t seem to matter to him as he backed her up against the wall and buried his hands in her hair. Her own hands hesitated only a moment on his chest before she shoved him back.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“Damn it, Shepard,” he cursed, “did it mean _nothing_ to you, then?”

She stared at him in shock and then said, “I’m not a homewrecker.”

“What does that have to do with us?” he asked.

“Us?” she repeated. “There is no ‘us,’ Coats. Now, I would advise you to remove your hands before I remove them for you.”

“Do you not remember?” he asked, backing away slowly. “I don’t understand, Shepard. I gave you time. I didn’t want to push, but you act as though nothing ever happened and yet I _see_ the way you look at me when you think I’m not paying attention.”

“You’re the one who seems to have forgotten an important detail,” she said.

“What?” he asked. “Is it because I took your leg? You knew I had no choice. You would have died otherwise.”

“Ivanna,” she said.

“What about her?” he asked.

“You really think I’d be satisfied with being the other woman?” she asked incredulously. “You think so little of me that you’d make me your dirty secret?”

“The other…Shepard, what the hell are you talking about?” he asked.

“Your wife!” she shouted. “Remember her? Pretty, young, blonde, crazy about you? ‘Nick, darling, there you are.’ Ringing any bells?”

His eyes widened and he laughed heartily. She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked a brow at him, unamused. His shoulders shook and he reached up to brush tears from the corners of his sparkling eyes. “My wife,” he repeated with amusement in his voice. “Oh, she’ll get a kick out of that. Ivanna is my sister-in-law.”

“You never said you had a brother,” she said suspiciously, trying to keep the relief at bay.

“Yes, I did,” he said. “You might have been asleep by that point, though. I have three brothers and two sisters. Ivanna is married to my twin, William. They’re going back to London next week.” When he saw that she still didn’t completely believe him, he activated his omni-tool. The blonde appeared on the screen a moment later. “Ivanna, love, Councilor Shepard is under the impression that we’re married.”

The woman’s eyes widened and she laughed as well before saying, “You’re cute, Nick, but I don’t think Will would approve of that. Charlie might get a bit confused as well.”

“Charlie’s my nephew,” Coats said.

“I’m sorry for laughing, Councilor,” Ivanna said to Shepard. “I don’t mean to be cruel. You should have seen poor Nick over the past weeks. He’s been downright surly. Now I know why.”

“So that wasn’t you kissing her at dinner,” Shepard said slowly.

“That was Will,” Ivanna said. “They’re identical, but Nick has more grey in his hair and Will’s eyes are more widely set. Their builds are different as well. Will isn’t a soldier. He’s an accountant. Here, I’ll send you a picture.”

“Thank you, ‘Vanna,” Coats said and ended the call. He brought up a holo of himself standing beside what could only be his twin or his clone. Side-by-side, she could see the subtle differences. William’s face was a bit softer and his nose broader. He was slighter in build than Nick and his hair lacked the gray sprinkled through Nick’s but was beginning to recede into a sharp widow’s peak. Will’s eyes were wider and bracketed with laugh lines rather than ones of stress. His left hand bore a wedding ring. “Do you believe me now?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said as relief flowed over her. “Damn it, when I saw her with you on the docks and saw the ring on her finger and she had your last name…I thought she was your wife and you just hadn’t mentioned her.”

“Is that why you’ve been avoiding me, love?” he asked, tilting her chin up so that he could look at her.

“Yes,” she said.

“Well,” he said, his eyes going to her mouth, “if you don’t want me, then say the word and I’ll leave you alone. But if questions over my marital status are all that’s been holding you back, I’d like to pick up where we left off. And, for the record, I am not married, engaged, dating, or otherwise romantically associated with anyone and was not when we met.”

In reply, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his. She didn’t know how he’d come to mean so much to her so quickly, but his arms around her felt like coming home. They would put the galaxy back together again. They would find the killer stalking the wards. They now had something that had never been an option to them before: time. All the time in the world.


End file.
